Southern Idaho environs

Shoshone Falls

Northeast Utah bleeds into southern Utah with just a simple sign to separate them. North of Ogden a string of small towns stretches up to Preston, the little farm town best known for its supporting role in cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. 

Mostly filmed on location due its low budget, writer-director Jared Hess turned the town into a character, its green hills, chicken farms and everyday structures – the burger villa, the bowling alley, the high school, and city park – furthering rounding the episodic story. 

The city supplies a map of film sites at several local gas stations. The house of Napoleon and Kip’s grandmother is east of downtown. Most other sites are right along U.S. 75. The gas station where I stopped had a full Napoleon Dynamite souvenir stand, with dozens of T-shirts, coffee mugs, and more. 

From Preston, I pressed on through more farm fields and then mountains that created a dramatic entrance into Idaho’s first large city. Out of the mountains I entered Pocatello, a bustling town of 56,000. 

I needed some time out of the car once I got my bearings and found the town’s historic blocks. I cut over to Pocatello’s historic downtown to check out Off the Rails Brewing in the historic business district. It was around the corner from the Hotel Yellowstone, a century-old brick fortress that still served as a hotel. 

 To celebrate vacation, I went for a fried chicken sandwich, which OTR serves with their beer cheese. That beer cheese was incredible, giving the chicken a feel like it was covered in gravy. Not healthy, but the sandwich provided exactly what I felt at that moment. 

I found Idaho’s farm season in full swing. Sprinklers fired everywhere outside the cities; one even hit me in the face through my open window as I exited the interstate in farm country. The water mostly comes from the Snake River, some from an aquifer replenished by annual snowfall. The water drawdowns seen at Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park come from water usage downstream, much along the plain. 

Above the Snake in the Hagerman Valley

Leaving Craters of the Moon the next morning, the impact of agricultural resumes quickly in this dry country, owing to the Snake River Plain. 

After a number of tiny farm towns, I would finally run into the mighty Snake outside Bliss, where U.S. 30 winds into the Hagerman Valley, part of which is protected by state and national park lands. 

Hagerman Fossil Beds and 1,000 Springs State Park share a visitor center. The 1,000 springs refers to groundwater that emerges in trickles and spouts from the canyon walls above the Snake. 

No two fossil beds are alike, so having two on one trip didn’t feel repetitive. Plus, you can’t get close to the Hagerman fossil bed quarries. They lie on steep cliffs and bluffs above the Snake River. An important fossil discovery on the steep cliffs of the valley led to the foundation of Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, where thousands of Pliocene Epoch fossils create a picture from the last major global warming event prior to our own. 

Fossil wrap from Hagerman beds

Full Hagerman horse fossil skeleton

Hagerman bend on the Snake

Quarry cliffs

The fossil beds signature fossil is the Hagerman horse, an extinct zebra-sized horse that has became Idaho’s state fossil. The Horse Quarry has produced five full skeletons and dozens of skulls, along with 45 species first found here and eight species not found anywhere else. 

Unlike other national monuments, visitors can only observe fossils at the visitor center. Thousands are store nearby and a scenic drive crosses the Snake to reveal where the fossils are found, but the fragile cliffs are not accessible. 

While necessary, the next stop felt unlikely in this lush country. I trekked across endless farms fields, crossed the Minidoka National Historic Site. Eighty years ago , it was known as the Minidoka War Relocation Center, when it housed 13,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Forced from their homes and into camps, Japanese-Americans at Minidoka primarily came from Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. 

The current administration asks visitors to inform about “negative portrayals” of American history, but I don’t know any other way to portray the internment camps or people ushered out of homes in the middle of the night, homes and possessions they could not reclaim after the war. 

Less remained of the Minidoka camp than the Amache camp in southeastern Colorado. The storage barn has been converted into a modern visitor center that details what led to the interment, how the internees organized and built ties with the local community despite their circumstances. 

More than 800 male internees would join the military during WWII, and the camp residents provided critical support during an August 1943 wildfire 65 miles away. 

All the while, they persisted behind five miles of barbwire fence and eight guard towers, one of which is recreated along the North Side Main Canal, the artificial waterway that forms the camp’s southern boundary. I reminded myself how easily this happened, and who easily it could happen again. Even if only a few original buildings from Minidoka remained, they played an important educational role. 

Twin Falls and its 51,000 residents anchor Magic Valley, with its location along the Snake comes with a major tourist attractions – Shoshone Falls. Dubbed the Niagara of the West, the falls look best in late spring when engorged by snow runoff, before agricultural diversions and late-summer drought reduce their flow. 

The city built a stately park along the south cliff overlooking the falls. For a $5 parking fee, spectacular views are easy. Multiple overlooks provide views of the falls and the deep canyon to the west. The park is a popular place for picnics and more, since the city constructed it to accommodate hundreds. Still, I took my pictures and left, as the park is a little chaotic on a summer afternoon. 

 A few miles downriver one can access the site of Evel Knievel’s ill-fated jump of the Snake River Canyon. The parachutes on Knievel’s rocket-powered motorcycle deployed too early. While he didn’t complete the jump, he walked away with minor injuries, landing on the canyon shore. 

Twin Falls felt similar to Pocatello in the town’s historic business district was surrounded by waves of newer development. The character was different, although friendliness of the people remained the same.

I landed at Koto Brewing, which takes its name from its home, Tojiro Koto’s 1920 stone commercial building on Main Avenue. Spicy shrimp tacos and a nice blonde ale filled me for the remainder of my drive to City of Rocks. 

 Across the street from Koto. I noticed a record store, Modern Sounds. With so much time in remote places, I never expected to encounter a record store on this trip. But in a few minutes of crate-digging, I found a Super Furry Animals EP from a past Record Store Day and a nice conversation with the clerk about the store. After a few years of record store pop-ups events at Koto, Modern Sounds opened in early 2025. Hopefully it has a long run. 

Soon enough I was eastbound again, with the route to City of Rocks leading me to sidestep a second pass through Pocatello. 

Although southern Idaho was mostly a pass-through between larger stops, I could have taken a slower course through the region. The historic stops would have stayed the same, but nights in Pocatello or Twin Falls would have fleshed out the region in way I couldn’t quite grasp when bouncing between remote camp sites.

The lighter side of Minidoka